Travels With The Bear

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

This will wander from Indonesia to Peru, but it’s all about bones. Really very dry bones. Could be pig bones, cow bones, or human bones as a Polish Baroness once said to me. Let’s begin with Peru, Marilyn and I and an Israeli commando we’ve met back in Equador and been traveling with for three months.

Alon comes in and says we’re taking a trip out to an Inca graveyard. Marilyn is a bit dubious but goes along for the ride. Ha! The ride is a 15 year old Ford, four door sedan sans upholstery! Not a scrap of fabric and that includes the seats! Well at least ours. The driver has softness. Once we leave the main unpaved road, it’s also obvious why we have no springs, shocks or windows. This is not a road, it’s a Marine obstacle course! But some how we hold on and get to the graves.

It takes one glance to see they have all been looted over and over for their ancient weaving. We walk around until Alon points to a skull cast aside from a grave. Pretty soon we are discovering all kinds of bones. Torsos propped up against mounds of hardened clay. Most of them still possess a great deal of dried skin! Marilyn is not happy. Alon and I try to soothe things but our guide beckons and we go over to one grave where he picks up a child’s hand and fore arm and asks if we want to hold it and be photographed! UGH!

Actually Peru wasn’t half as much fun as Sulawesi, one of the larger Indonesian islands. The northern part is Christian, well with deviations. Yo have to sacrifice a great many water buffalo before your kin can have any influence in Heaven. So it goes. A burial up there can take a week and have a 1000 guests. Water buffs and pigs are slaughtered and presented to the guests. But the best part of this area are the graves.

The richer you are the higher up they are on the cliffs. And once you’re dead, the carve a effigy of you that’s two thirds normal size, dress it in your best clothes and stick it up on the cliffs with all your other deceased relations! It’s really cool, here you are with three or four generations! Everyone dressed in their best and surveying the degenerating world from above! Can’t beat it!

Well, Marilyn really got into photographing these graves. One day we found one of the most famous. There are nineteen effigies on the balcony about fifty feet up! So she’s using a 300 MM lens and sighting in when she feels something go crunch under her left foot. When she looks down, she is standing among perhaps fifteen human skulls a various other body bones. Seems that once you’re dead, your dead and your remains are unimportant. So they just put them in a wooden casket, sit it beneath the balconies and let the weather take care of getting rid of you.Marilyn squeals. She’s frozen, trying to avoid stepping on another. It is difficult since there is really no place to step without crushing some poor soul's remaining skull. I sort of guide her out.

Later we see something really cool. There are no cliffs in this region so they cut holes in really large rocks and bury their dead in them. Outside they stack your favorite objects while living. Lots of empty booze bottles, a tennis racket and cans of pie filling. Wow! And best of all, if a child dies before it gets its first teeth, it is declared it has not had enough life. So they choose a lovely tree, carve a hole and slip a tiny wooden casket in it. A living grave. It takes a long time for the tiny casket to rot in there and meantime the infant enjoys the tree growing and expanding! Hey! That’s really cool! So it’s bone . . . . . After all, unless we are cremated . . . .See what I mean? Bye-bye for now.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Yeah, it sounds like Sci Fi, and it’s not the end of the world like planet explosions or plagues which kill us all. It’s Ani, a wonderful ruin on the very edge of the Turkish Russian border. In 1215 it was the end of the explored world; the gateway to The Uncharted East for Marco Polo. And in 1987 it was the end of The Western Free World and the beginnings of Soviet Sphere of Influence . . . . Whatever. Marilyn and I arrived in this eastern area in late May. At the time 100 miles east of Istanbul or fifty north of the Southern Coast and it was 1200 again. Narrow half paved traffic empty roads. Lines of reapers swinging their scythes in unison. Storks roosting on high tension electric lines, and hospitality that shocked even us. We took on Ani because it was there. We hadn’t a clue what it was. Our guide was a Turk soldier in civilian clothes, with an AK 47 tucked under his loose smock. He made us surrender all our cameras and passports. Then we had this brief lecture on what we could not do once we were there. ‘ Do not stop for more than five minutes at any site. So not sit any where within the zone. Above all, do not look at the guard towers on the Russian side of the border. They will be watching us the entire time we are there. If we break these rules they often fire at us. Marilyn gives me that look she reserves for me when I shove us into some life threatening event. But Ani’s tug is too much for her to end our tour. But I am warned I am not to flaunt the rules, “ Or else!’ I seldom get the Or Else! Ani was the Capitol of the vast 12th century Armenian Empire. It held 200,000 inhabitants at its zenith and it’s Orthodox Churches are breath taking. Even in ruins. Come to think of it, some buildings do look better when they are in some state of decay. However, the domes and towers are all in good stead. The avenues are wide and the crumbled foundations outline the huge size of many building. This all ended when the Mongol hordes swept in. They were horsemen, mobile, there was no need for urban life. So they drove everyone they didn’t slaughter into the mountains. Now, the USSR Traveler’s Aide Stations. Every 200 yards there’s this wooden tower, about forty feet high, with one side completely open. A low barb-wire fence keeps us back about a hundred feet from the Turk Border. And what a border! This shear 500 feet gorge with a nice green river slurping along at it’s bottom. It’s at least 500 or 600 feet across to an equally shear alabaster cliff; which is laced with strands of electrified barb-wire! And between the watch towers is a twenty feet high electrified fence topped off with more rolled razor wire. And there are guards armed with rifles and huge telescopes fixed on us. Oh, we’re the lone visitors. And how can you expect a bear to obey the rules? Especially a German Bear! So, I took a seat after half an hour exploring and the Turk gave me a wink as he ordered me back on my feet. Then, I just stopped and stared over at one of the towers for a full minute. Marilyn actually laughed! Our guardian-guide shook his head and grunted. So, what the hell, I gave the Ruskeys a happy wave. And I could see two of them dropped their glasses and leaned on the railing. Oh, there’s a red castle just inside the Iranian-Turkish border that you got to see! It’s 13thCentury and had central heat and indoor plumbing! Four full baths! It’s on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the gorge. Also, admire Mount Ararat. Speculate where Noah beached the Ark! Can’t climb its 14,000 feet. Packs of wild dogs’ll make short work of Gringos! Go! It’s the end of the world. I swear by all the gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s outrageously wonderful!!!!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

This will wander from Indonesia to Peru, but it’s all about bones. Really very dry bones. Could be pig bones, cow bones, or human bones as a Polish Baroness once said to me. Let’s begin with Peru, Marilyn and I and an Israeli commando we’ve met back in Ecuador and been traveling with for three months.

Alon comes in and says we’re taking a trip out to an Inca graveyard. Marilyn is a bit dubious but goes along for the ride. Ha! The ride is a 15 year old Ford, four door sedan sans upholstery! Not a scrap of fabric and that includes the seats! Well at least ours. The driver has softness. Once we leave the main unpaved road, it’s also obvious why we have no springs, shocks or windows. This is not a road, it’s a Marine obstacle course! But some how we hold on and get to the graves. It takes one glance to see they have all been looted over and over for their ancient weaving. We walk around until Alon points to a skull cast aside from a grave. Pretty soon we are discovering all kinds of bones. Torsos propped up against mounds of hardened clay. Most of them still possess a great deal of dried skin! Our guide beckons and we go over to one grave where he picks up a child’s hand and fore arm and asks if we want to hold it and be photographed! UGH!

Actually Peru wasn’t half as much fun as Sulawesi, one of the larger Indonesian islands. The northern part is Christian, well with deviations. Yo have to sacrifice a great many water buffalo before your kin can have any influence in Heaven. So it goes. A burial up there can take a week and have a 1000 guests. Water buffs and pigs are slaughtered and presented to the guests. But the best part of this area are the graves.

The richer you are the higher up they are on the cliffs. And once you’re dead, they carve a effigy of you that’s two thirds normal size, dress it in your best clothes and stick it up on the cliffs with all your other deceased relations! It’s really cool, here you are with three or four generations! Everyone dressed in their best and surveying the degenerating world from above! Can’t beat it!

Well, Marilyn really got into photographing these graves. One day we found one of the most famous. There are nineteen effigies on the balcony about fifty feet up! So she’s using a 300 MM lens and sighting in when she feels something go crunch under her left foot. When she looks down, she is standing among perhaps fifteen human skulls and various other body bones. Seems that once you’re dead, you're dead and your remains are unimportant. So they just put them in a wooden casket, sit it beneath the balconies and let the weather take care of getting rid of you.Marilyn squeals when she discovers what is beneath her feet. She’s frozen, trying to avoid stepping on another. Gently she wiggles her way out without doing major damage.

Later we see something really cool. There are no cliffs in this region so they cut holes in really large rocks and bury their dead in them. Outside they stack your favorite objects while living. Lots of empty booze bottles, a tennis racket and cans of pie filling. Wow! And best of all, if a child dies before it gets its first teeth, it is declared it has not had enough life. So they choose a lovely tree, carve a hole and slip a tiny wooden casket in it. A living grave. It takes a long time for the tiny casket to rot in there and meantime the infant enjoys the tree growing and expanding around it! Hey! That’s really cool! So it’s bone . . . . . After all, unless we are cremated . . . .See what I mean? Bye-bye for now.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Marilyn and I retired on Friday, got married on Saturday and the following Thursday left on a 31 month honey moon. Not bad for starters, but this is about a trip into Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg with a former student who will remain nameless for ever. We started down the Moselle River, the river of wine and cheese. The three of us in a Isusu truck. Camping all the way, we ran into Der Rules and German customs about what sort of wardrobe you wore on what certain day of the week. Tiers, Germany was fun. I was wearing knickers and it was Monday. We were told by dozens of eyes, this is not for today, dum koph! Jarvis, our ex-student spoke German, French, Dutch and some form of American, and he never got use to waking in the morning in his tent and joining us for a bottle of cold white wine and cereal. ‘ God! You were such an academic tyrant, Mr’ R! How come you’re as loose as a goose now?’ I smiled and tilted another 70 cl. Marilyn had coffee. She had to drive. We turned off the Moselle right after it entered France and headed east. Up the Rhine, one wine and cheese village after the other. German strudel, pancakes, and of course a beer now and then. Jarvis just shook his head and joined the party. And oh yes, we dropped into 1000 year old churches, abbeys, castles and did a few mussos on the way. But mostly we ate well and drank even better. Someone was always the designated drunk. And someone was always cold sober when driving. Then we got to Luxembourg, land of PASTRY!!! In the capitol, there is an entire street devoted to nothing but! And, no one infringed on the next door neighbor! This place made only apple concoctions, and the next was plum. You might go down one side of the street, bleaching and struggling for the strength to U turn and come back the other way! This side is the Cake Aisle!There’s every kind of cake your imagination has ever thought of! They’re single, double, triple and even four masters! Chocolate! Three kinds in one cake! Cakes with fruit in, on and around them! Cakes so heavy you need both hands to carry them to the truck! It’s a tough job but someone, who else but Americans, have to save the world from a sugar attack! We wade in, damn the losses! We’re here to save the world . . .again! Marilyn finally steps over the line. I tell her to take twenty bucks and tell buy something. She proceeds to buy the street! She and Jarvis come back with two shopping bags! How can anyone manage to devour what’s lurking in those satin white sacks and stay sane? I CAN! WE CAN and we do! Well, not the last cake, the Two-Ton Tony! We gag when we think of finishing it off after we’re sprawled out on the ground, not knowing if we are going to throw-up or bow out on the sugar fix. It has to wait! Next day we pull into a rest stop for a late Breakfast. Two bottles of Breakfast and The Cake. Marilyn cuts it into three huge chunks and we settle on the tail gate. Pass the breakfast and take a bite. Bow to the trucker’s horn as he flies by, waving his hand. We are saving the world. There is no doubt! My hand grows weary from holding the slice erect, so I forgo the wine and munch away. My beard reeks of cake and wine. My mind reeks of Marilyn and Jarvis. It’s the end of the excursion, but the beginnings of a impossible voyage which will take us into a Europe which is slowly dissolving for the third tioe in the 20th century. We drop Jarvis off in Amsterdam and head out on what will be entitled Our Mad, Mad, Mad, Magical Misery Tour. You’ve experienced a bit of it. If you want more try my entries at www.wattpad.com. It’s called The Battles of Tibet., the M. M. M. M. T. And Not All Gates Are Pearly. I hope you enjoy it, or them. And Jarvis, we miss you. What the hell is going on in your life? http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Friday, December 25, 2009

Well it’s Christmas and I got to Blog that, right? Let’s start with the fact that more than likely we got the wrong date for the birth of Christ. It’s more than likely August or early September. So how come? Well, somewhere in the early fourth century a group of Arian priests, an early Christian sect which was declared heretical in 326AD, went up into the what is today Germany to convert others. When they found that the greatest holiday was Winter Solstice, i.e. December 21-25, they offered the fact that it was amazing that Christ was born at the same time and the rest is history . . .again.

Now to, St Nicolas and or Santa Claus. For this we go to Turkey. Yeah I know, but bear with me. Turkey is the wellspring of Christian doctrine and dogma. Paul did lots of his writings here and even Peter stopped by. So get in the rental car and leave Kas, Turkey via the coast road going east to Demre, the ancient city of Myra. You’ll never find a better coast road for 'ah & oh' views. You go over a nice gentle mountain road skirt along farms where you get waved at and then the Med. shoves its deep blue nose in your left cheek for 60 or so miles. Down for a couple thousand feet and stretched out at your feet is Myra. There’s a wonderful Roman archway where the ancient walls use to be. Stop, it’s worth a visit, and so is the old harbor with the old docks and crumbled ruins of long gone prosperity.

Once in town, head for the main square and St. Nicolas’ church. Park, get out and have an ice cream cone or some great yogurt while I tell you about this really cool guy who lived here about 1700 years ago, a prosperous merchant in a town that had, had its ups and downs. There were plenty of poor people. Originally, he anonymously gifted poor families with wedding dowries. Well, come Christmas Eve, this dude use to go around delivering gifts to the poor. Usually food and a coin or so if the plight there was really tough. He became the bishop of Myra and died in 342 C.E.

And guess what? Sure . . . he didn’t want the town folks to know who was dropping gifts on them. After all, he wasn’t going to do this except on this one date. So he thought of a great idea. He climbed up on the roofs and dropped them down empty chimneys. Most of the time it isn’t cold enough for a fire. Even now. And so that’s how that goes. All the red suits and stuff like that came out of Europe at a much later date.

For those of you looking for Roman and Greek ruins, or heart stopping scenery, lazy boat trips, nude sun bathing, and the best fresh fruits and veggie you are going to get for a long time, go to Turkey. Oh, and you will also meet some of the best behaved, friendly, kind and interesting folks you’ll ever meet along the way. Istanbul is cool, but it’s a two or at the most three day town. Get down on the south coast, winter summer spring or fall and you will be totally blown away. I promise you.

Last of all, may each and everyone of you have a very Happy Holiday, a Great New Year’s Eve and may 2010 give you all a better taste in your lovely mouths. Until we go on a trip to the ruins on four continents, peace, love and above all GO! GO NOW! DON’T WAIT !!!

Friday, December 18, 2009

This is not just any hill. It’s The Mount Of The Beatitudes, the place where Jesus said the Lord’s Prayer for the first time and delivered the Sermon On The Mount. It’s just a hill. In West Virginia it would be a knoll but the crusaders never thought anyone would get here, so they gave out some strange names. Once a year for about ten years , we went to the "mount" every March/ April to pick wild flowers. Let’s leave why for another time. There is a convent on the crest, the only holy place run by nuns in the entire Holy Land. The church was built my Mussolini, and Italian dictator from 23 to 45. The church is in five different styles. I guess he wanted to make all the sects happy. If there’s enough rain, the wild flowers stretch like Grand Mom’s quilt from here to the Sea of Galilee, about four hundred yards. It knocks you socks off. And speaking of that, there are a few other things which will knock more then those off. Our first season picking, we take a present to the tenent farmer and meet his three daughters. They work the farm, grow wheat, herd about sixty sheep, harvest the wool, and go to college. They all speak, English, French, Hebrew and Arabic. Not bad for farmers, right? Bet your butt. So we’re out in the mustard, a yellow flower which grows to about three feet. I’m wading in there, picking away, when one of the girls rolls by on her tractor and stops dead. She motions to me and I go over. She tells me it’s not safe to go in the mustard. ‘ There are three snakes here. A green, a yellow and a red. The first two will make you wish you were dead, and the red one gives you about twenty seconds to decided where you want to sit down and die’ sure. But I’m Emperor Of The Universe And Surrounding Areas. So once she’s out of sight, I wade right back in. I’ve been picking for an hour and nary a snake! They’re scared of me! I’m bent over and something strikes my leather boot with the force of a small hammer. I look down and red is looking back at me. There’s a small clot of stuff dripping off my boot. Did I get out? Mark, my youngest son claims that he now believes I did play some major football. ‘ Dad , you came out of there like you were a star corner back!’ Another year Marilyn and I are picking and come across two kids sleeping in the mustard! It’s cold so they got about an hour before the boys come out to sun themselves. We tell ‘em. They hesitate. After all they are immortal! Besides they’re French! But somehow we do get it over to them and they pile out of there. We see two green ones about two hours later. The flowers. Israel has some of the most beautiful wild flowers in the entire world. If the rains come, then the flowers suddenly transform a barren red clay hillside into some Impressionist painting in 24 hours. You can drive about and never really see more than two kinds again in any one place. We were very careful about what we picked. Mustard is abundant. So is Queen Anne’s Lace. You can not pick the poppies. That’s a national treasure. The purples come early. The yellows blend in about two days later. And then the poppies take over fields and you feel like this is where the Impressionist painters worked. Not Belgium! So why? We gathered, pressed and dried them before we came home. Then we set them to hand lettered verses Christ spoke from the hill. For ten years we had a great time and made many friends over there. And then two people were murdered on the hill, and a couple of rockets from Lebanon came in. We weren’t there, but our Israeli friends told us it was too dangerous, so we haven’t been back since 2000. And oh that year! The Pope showed up. Thousands of tourists stole flowers, swipe rocks and generally tried to . . .oh well. It was fun. More on it later.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Thursday, November 5, 2009

We are travelers, not the same as tourists. We go. We stay. We seek. We take in a place, deciding each day where our journey will end. If we choose to linger, we linger. Unlike the locals, if we do not like a place...most of the time...we can leave.

So in January 1990 we flew to Amsterdam and under the loving care of our Dutch family, bought a Nissan van on credit cards and set off with the hope of driving to Samarkand. Why we did not get there is for another time. We lived in the van for almost a year traversing eastern Europe, Turkey, and some of the Middle East. We ended our year with over three months in what had been the “Eastern Block” on what we affectionately call the Magical Misery Tour, a trip through the aftermath and wreckage of World War Two.

We had just completed a tour of Nazi death camps and returned to Czechoslovakia for a few more days in Prague when we decided that it was time to begin heading home, home being Amsterdam and preparations for the return to America. It was fall, cold and the dwindling of tourists apparent. We were late leaving Prague that day for some unremembered reason, but we were headed west toward what had been East Germany.

How to describe the evening of the day that East became West? The communist part of Germany had always been closed to us, but here we were headed for the border and a night in Dresden. It was the evening of the day before Unification. The following day would be the first day the former East Germany would cease to exist.

We approached the border well after nightfall. The guard towers, like alien space ships whose tentacle-legs stretched down under bright lights, appeared to hover menacingly. Fences. Dogless cages. Everywhere, fences. Tall fences. The lights aimed so meticulously gave the feeling of being in a mobile interrogation center. Strangely, there were no people. There was only an eerie silence and no other cars. We drove the length of the passage in total isolation. We passed into what had been for us a closed entity as if we were driving from some rural community into any city. No one stopped us. No one cared that we were driving from one dimension of the twentieth century into another, from one time to the next.

We found a campground but we had no local currency. There had been no expected “checkpoint” or money exchange as was customary at border crossings, just the towers and the fences. The proprietors of the campground were as perplexed as we. They themselves did not know what to expect and could not even begin to tell us where we would be able to get the needed exchange. Money would be a problem not just for us but for everyone. They were in limbo, caught between a world they knew and one they could not imagine.

“No one knows how it will work,” they told us. The next day the sun came up. We left a passport as security, drove to the international airport and obtained Deutsche Marks. This year is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It took yet another year for those towers to empty, the fences to disappear. Unification is still a work in progress, at least the human part. I suspect the scar of the passage from one county to the next is physically gone. Other scars linger, though we did not. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0